As part of our overall strategy of reducing government to a size where it can be drowned in a bathtub (as our friend Grover Norquist puts it), we should take every opportunity to slash budgets in every agency, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency and the Fish and Wildlife Service. One effective way to do that is to ask Congress for less money than the agencies want….
According to a report released last week by the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA), a trade association representing gas pipeline companies, the impact of the recent harsh hurricane season on the Gulf coast may mean natural gas shortages in coming months, just as utilities and homeowners buckle down for a colder-than-expected winter.
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney announced last week that the Commonwealth has joined a bloc of seven other U.S. states in attempts to force automakers to produce cars and trucks with less of the emissions that are exacerbating global warming and other pollution-related environmental ills. California moved first by proposing the stricter standards last year, but the automakers have challenged the constitutionality of that statewide initiative in the courts.
Small as they are, tossed toothbrushes certainly do create a lot of waste. Indeed, some 50 million pounds of them are tossed into America’s landfills each year. If we followed our dentist’s recommendations and replaced our toothbrushes every three months, we’d be throwing even more of them away.
Artists, photographers and electronics technicians have long relied on aerosol spray dusters to carefully remove dust and fine particles from sensitive surfaces like paintings, film and computer hardware.
Ice shelves are thick plates of ice that float on the ocean around much of Antarctica. Snow, glaciers and ice floes feed these large plates in the colder months. In warmer periods, surface melting creates standing water that leaks into cracks and speeds the breaking off (calving) of icebergs, decreasing the continent’s mass in a natural cycle as old as Antarctica itself.
Simply put, the term “eco-fashion” refers to stylized clothing that uses environmentally sensitive fabrics and responsible production techniques.
I’m sitting in an off-the-grid cabin in the red rock hills of New Mexico near where Georgia O’Keeffe used to live and paint, working by candlelight on my laptop run by solar-powered battery. Four weeks ago, I decided I would get away from my manicured suburban life–never mind the chinch bugs that have turned my green lawn into a scarred, weedy mess–and retreat into solitude and simplicity for inspiration. There’s a long line of writers who have done this: Henry David Thoreau, Edward Abbey, John Muir, Annie Dillard.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last week that it has revised its procedures for assessing the fuel economy of vehicles with new standards that take into account updated technology, air conditioning use, faster driving, and increased traffic idling time. The agency’s testing standards–first introduced following the oil shocks of the 1970s–have not undergone any significant changes since 1985.
Two new reports released last week show that concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are increasing and sea levels are rising more quickly than they have for thousands of years thanks to increased development around the world during the 20th century.
